I finally gotten around to trying out shogun 2 but I'm running into a bit of a perf issue. vaguely i remember the game was very slow starting up because it loads a large number of texture; but when I started playing the tutorial (it's been a while since I played total war rome) it seemed extermely sluggish between loading screens (actual play once something is loaded is ok).

My system is not too old (2500k, 6950, windows 7 64bit); is there some sort of trick to reduce load time; or does it get better after the tutorial? I guess I can deal with an incredibly slow tutorial if the main game is a bit better but I can't really see playing the full game at this pace.

Yep that is it, it makes link to different drive, steam is not aware of difference. To it it looks like it is still on main drive. Still game is huge, user would need pretty big ssd to store it beside operating system.

Just use SteamMover - its a simple tool that executes the right Dos commands for you. It really is the simpler way to do this, no install no pain just zero frills moving of the data with a link, if there is space.

Shogun runs considerably better on an SSD than HDD, more than twice as quick at least.

Just use SteamMover - its a simple tool that executes the right Dos commands for you. It really is the simpler way to do this, no install no pain just zero frills moving of the data with a link, if there is space.

Shogun runs considerably better on an SSD than HDD, more than twice as quick at least.